Right now I am seriously annoyed as it makes walking around and a lot of
movements painful, I was almost back to being able to sleep on my right side,
now I wont for a while. I once more will be unable to run for a few weeks, and
can not put full power into the pedals for another few weeks now too. I also
have this theory that the cyclocross bike is cursed. This is the only bike I
have ever owned on which I have had crashes serious enough to stop me riding or
doing other things.

Sure I have had other crashes, such as those
involving the breaking of
frames however I was still able to go out and do long hard riders or other
stuff the next day without much pain. So far on the CX bike I have crashed
badly 4 times, each time with the front wheel losing traction and ending up
pretty badly hurt. Stitches at the hospital required from one such incident
in November 2007, then last year I came off and broke my collar bone when the
front wheel lost traction. The recent crash in the CX race meant a month of no
running, missing some events and some serious pain. Now a repeat (though it
does not feel quite so severe) today. I guess it is possible that something
about my position on the bike combined with the geometry and handling of it
simply does not suit my riding style and thus I just lose the front wheel
badly form time to time. Or I could be blaming the tool.

I made it out to Stromlo of course and we got to work, getting closer to
having all the pipes up to hold the bunting around the XC course. We put in
some new rocks in a line on one section to make A and B lines, later while
working near hammer head the Australian team came past. I took some photos of
them practising sections (not posting online until I get faster Internet at
home again). So we asked them to check out the new section later on and tell
us if it worked and if the B line needed to be slowed or the A line
changed. In the end we went down and fixed both up to the extent it should
work well while the practised in front of us as we changed it around to ensure
it was correct. As Dave said it was kind of fun to have the elites there as we
built this to see how it worked at pace.

Upon getting home I showered and headed out to see a movie, Coraline in
3d. This (being a Neil Gaiman based movie) was something I had been looking
forward to for a long while, everyone had said seeing it in 3d was worth it
too. What can I say, it did not disappoint, scary and cool and fantastic and
fun and incredible and sweet and fun and oh so worth seeing. The 3d was a cool
experience too.